A Jazz Giant and a Kids’ Band: Scott Hamilton’s History with the SAJB
There is something special about the relationship between one of the finest and most respected American jazz musicians of the past fifty years, and some of the most talented young jazz musicians in Europe today.
The veteran musician is tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton, frequent guest and collaborator with the famed Sant Andreu Jazz Band (SAJB) in Barcelona.
Those who are familiar with the SAJB know it is not a mere “kids’ band.” Created in 2006 by musician and music educator Joan Chamorro, it has, over nearly two decades, grown from a modest group of a few music students learning and playing Dixieland, to a full-size big band and its various side-groups performing in many of the finest venues in Europe. The band has released dozens of CDs, hosts its own annual jazz festival, and has had the world’s top jazz musicians play and record with them on a fairly regular basis.
Yet the musicians in the band have always ranged in age from pre-teens to about twenty-one, and many have continued with successful solo careers as the most popular young jazz musicians on the continent and elsewhere.
Just a few years after the founding the SAJB, Chamorro began inviting his local professional musician friends to play and record with the band, and then also turned his attention to the top American pros whom he had either heard on recordings, met in person, or saw performing via YouTube videos. These have included the late Bobby Gordon, New York musicians Scott Robinson, Jon-Erik Kellso, and John Allred (known collectively as part of the band The EarRegulars), Alan Vache, Joe Magnarelli, Joel Frahm, Dena DeRose, Dick Oatts, Terrell Stafford, Wycliffe Gordon, and Jesse Davis — all of whom have contributed their talents to SAJB live performances and/or recordings.
The SAJB’s tradition of welcoming such distinguished American jazz personalities continued in a big way when tenor sax legend Scott Hamilton made his first journey to join the band in Barcelona in the spring of 2013.
“Joan’s very smart about musicians,” he says. “He’s always been close with the Spanish musicians, they all like him a lot. But he’s made [American] friends before me. There was a whole slew of guys I know who had already been over here, really good jazz musicians. He’s drawn people from all different areas of jazz.”
Hamilton, who has just celebrated his 70th birthday, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and began playing sax in his teens. He found himself in Benny Goodman’s band as an early twenty-something in the mid-1970s.
Since then, he has had an enviable career, recording over 75 albums under his own name and playing venues big and small with a Who’s Who of the greatest jazz musicians in history.
His sound on tenor, like that of other greats including Zoot Sims, covers the range from delicate ballads to high-energy, swinging numbers in a seemingly effortless way.
He and his wife had lived in London for several years, but, he says, “it was getting expensive, and I played a concert down here in this little town [about an hour outside Florence, Italy]. We found an apartment and were going to stay a couple of months — that was about fifteen years ago. It’s very easy here, very nice.”
He first entered the SAJB world when he took part in the famous showcase for Andrea Motis at Barcelona’s Jamboree Club in April of 2013.
“Basically, the connection was that I was a longtime colleague of Esteve Pi, Ignasi Terraza, and Joan Monné. Esteve called me because I knew he was working with this teenage girl [Andrea] who was a big star in Spain, and they were getting a lot of concert dates. He called and said, ‘would you come and play for a week at the Jamboree?’ And I said yes, we’d love to come.’” He added, “None of my friends were available for gigs anymore because they were busy doing gigs with Andrea!”
Joan Chamorro recalls, “I met Scott Hamilton many years ago, through his albums — solo, in a quartet, or alongside great musicians like Gerry Mulligan, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, etc. My love for Ben Webster’s music, which influenced Scott in his early days, also led me to him. I started buying his albums and listening to him in depth.
“In 2013, through contact with Esteve Pi, we brought him to record with Andrea Motis Joan Chamorro quintet at the jamboree in Barcelona, and from that meeting a beautiful live at jamboree album appeared.”
Hamilton picks up the story: “On the Saturday of that week, they asked, ‘would you come out early and do this outdoor concert at the Plaza Reial and meet some of the kids?’ And that’s how that happened. Yes, that was all done the same week we did the videos and album with Andrea at the Jamboree Club.”
Chamorro remembers, “Songs like ‘My baby just cares from me,’ ‘China Boy,’ ‘Georgia on my Mind’ made the lindy-hoppers who filled the square dance. It’s a wonderful memory of a happy atmosphere, with lots of smiles, lots of good energy and lots of good music. Scott had come with his wife and I remember eating with them in a restaurant in the square. He was and is a kind person. He knew us before that meeting and admired our work. Everything went incredibly well.”
Like all of the veteran musicians who have played with the SAJB as special guests, he was quite impressed by what he saw and heard from the teen and pre-teen musicians at that first concert.
“It’s astonishing,” he says, “because I’m not a teacher, I haven’t spent a lot of time around people trying to teach jazz to young people, but this was different than any sort of jazz education that’s ever existed before, in the sense that everybody there had a natural enthusiasm, and natural kind of understanding of the music, and a natural feeling of the music. And that’s something that you only ever saw in individuals before this, never a group of people who played individual styles and had this kind of spirit and abilities.”
He has also been impressed with how many multi-instrumentalists have always populated the band.
“These kids really all double on unusual combinations of instruments. I wasn’t surprised to see Elia playing tenor sax, but the tenor sax is so much easier to play than the violin, in terms of producing a sound, and playing the scale on it. They’re all difficult if you want to get past a certain point, but they don’t get much more difficult than the violin, in terms of technique. If you want to be a violin player, you really have to start when you’re five or six years old, or they say it will never really happen.”
When playing with the SAJB — whether it was a decade ago or just last year — Hamilton has always had confidence that the young musicians know what they’re doing, and there is never a need to wait for them to “catch up” to him.
“No, not at all,” he says. “To tell you the truth, when I’m with them, it’s always a question of trying to keep up with the new material that’s being presented each time, so my attention is trying not to ruin the take for them. I’d say I’ve done very little rehearsing with them, but there have been times when it probably would have gone better if I had done more rehearsing, but I’m not a very good rehearser. These days I just try to really pay attention, and if I concentrate, and keep my ears open, usually we have a chance! But they’re very professional and there’s never a problem with that, ever.”
And, even as a musician of his experience and stature, he still finds himself learning on his feet whenever he plays with the band. “The biggest problem−it’s not a problem, it’s actually good−as far as repertoire goes, I’m familiar with about 65% of the repertoire that they play, at least in terms of knowing how the song goes−except for the big amount of Brazilian music that they play. I really like it, but I don’t have the background that they do. And so a lot of these songs are brand new to me, and that’s a really good thing, because I’m learning a lot of music.” Referring to Jazzing’s Brazil theme in 2023, he adds, “And they sing very well in Portuguese!”
During our talk at that Jazzing, Hamilton agreed that the SAJB provides the most solid of foundations for its aspiring jazz musicians. “No, doubt!” he’s quick to say. “The best. Absolutely the best. The’ll have much less trouble than a lot of other people. They could play anything. They’re gonna be all over the world, and they’ll always have this as their family that they can come back to. Even now I see a lot of the ones that I’ve known are up in Amsterdam and Rotterdam studying, some are in New York…and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
He says Chamorro’s method of teaching is also spot-on. “He’s very smart that way because that’s how it’s done. That’s how it’s always been done. That’s how I learned. You have to take the song that you want, and reduce it to little pieces, and sit there and get the little pieces, and pretty soon you’ve got the whole thing…you’ve internalized it, which is a lot different than somebody giving it to you on a piece of paper. Once you’ve internalized a piece of music theory, it’s inside you. It’s there forever. And that’s how these kids can be so good. It is unusual in that the way they learn is a logical, sensible way, and I think that jazz education hasn’t really relied on logic too much over the years.”
He offered further thoughts on the more conventional methods of teaching jazz:
“Granted, I have respect for people’s ideas about jazz education, because I know it’s a really difficult idea in the first place. But a lot of them don’t work, you know. The only guys who come out of conservatories playing jazz are the guys who went into conservatories playing jazz. The problem with conservatories is they insist you have a curriculum. The administration wants to see it at the beginning of the year. And so, since the ’70s people have come up with some of the wackiest ideas for a curriculum. In the ’70s they used to teach you how to play jazz by teaching you all the different modes, and tell you that each song was made up of a series of modes. Of course, it’s ridiculous — it’s not. But could be viewed that way. But all it does is teach people to be more reliant on things they shouldn’t be reliant on.”
He also pondered the concept of child prodigies in music — something to which Joan Chamorro does not subscribe as far as the SAJB musicians are concerned. “It’s easier for some people than others,” Hamilton says. “There are different levels of that sort of thing. There was Mozart, there are things that are just indescribable, unexplainable. But it’s all part of the same thing, I think. Mathematics, sports, languages — some things come easier to people than others. In my life, musical things are easier for me than they are for most people. Even with most musicians, it’s easier for me to figure out what might give other people a lot of trouble. I end up being lazy because I know it’s not gonna be that hard.”
That said, one can’t deny the extraordinary skills of former SAJB musicians such as Andrea Motis and Rita Payes, who were demonstrating their especially high level of jazz understanding and know-how when they had barely entered their teens.
“That starts when you’re really young,” he says. “For instance, some people can draw anything. It’s just a weird phenomenon. Andrea and Rita created catalogs in their minds of music created decades before. Who knows where the line between intuition and enthusiasm goes. When you hear something that excites you, it stays in your mind. When you’re young — the thing about being really young is, you know, your mind is so flexible and sponge-like, it just scoops everything up. It’s incredible, really.”
He returned in 2014 to take part in the live recording of Joan Chamorro presenta Rita Payes. “From there,” Chamorro says, “a very nice relationship was established with Scott. From those sessions, there are many songs that are yet to see the light, both with Rita and, for the most part, with Andrea Motis. Possibly, in the not-too-distant future, all those unreleased songs will see the light.”
He also took part in the SAJB’s concert at the 2018 Barcelona Jazz Festival, held at the Palau de la Musica, the strikingly ornate concert hall in Barcelona, and venue for many of the SAJB’s most memorable performances. For that particular occasion, Elia was given a featured spot to play a “Stardust”/ “Shine” medley. And shine she did, commanding center stage for nearly eight minutes, joined by Hamilton for the “Shine” half of the medley. The piece ended to tremendous applause. “I remember that concert perfectly,” she says. “It was a very special moment for me because there was a Stephane Grappelli tribute at this Barcelona Jazz Festival. Stephane Grappelli played in this festival, and in the same place, the Palau de Musica, years ago, and I did this tribute in the concert with the Sant Andreu jazz band.”
Collaborating with Elia made Hamilton realize he had been a tad rusty playing alongside a violinist. “I made a record with Joe Venuti back when I was 22 years old, and I had been listening to Venuti since I was a kid, from my father’s records. And I played a set one time in the ’80s with Stephane Grappelli’s band. But other than that, I’ve had very little chance to work with violin players. Actually, I’m a big fan of jazz violin. I’ve always been a fan of Stuff Smith and Ray Nance, and a number of other good violin players. So I’ve got a lot of appreciation for it, but I’ve had very little experience. I’m still learning how to blend in ensembles with violins. It’s a tricky thing.”
The pairing of her violin and his tenor sax began to occur more frequently in live performances and recordings, many done in Chamorro’s home studio/rehearsal space, known as The Jazz House.
He played on five tracks for Elia’s first CD under her own name, The Magic Sound of the Violin.
In 2019, Hamilton returned to perform as a guest with The New Quartet, an SAJB side project consisting of Elia, Joan Chamorro, and longtime SAJB musicians Alba Armengou on trumpet/vocals, and Carla Motis on guitar.
The group’s live set at the 2019 Barcelona Jazz Festival is preserved on the 2020 CD release, Joan Chamorro and New Quartet, featuring Scott Hamilton.
Hamilton’s invaluable contributions to so many recordings and live gigs featuring Elia led to the decision to record an “official” collaborative album, titled Elia Bastida Meets Scott Hamilton.
“Joan may have suggested the idea,” Hamilton says, “but I think Elia pushed to work with me a little bit, and Joan saw that it would be something she wanted to do. And, certainly, from the beginning, something that I liked doing.”
Sessions began in late 2019, but the global Covid pandemic put this and other SAJB-related projects on hold for just about all of 2020. Hamilton was also hindered by enforced travel restrictions. Happily, the musicians were able to put the final tracks and other finishing touches to the album in late October of 2021, in time for its debut concert at the Barcelona Jazz Festival in December, followed by a pair of concerts in Madrid.
“All of this has been really good for me,” Hamilton said at the time — adding, with considerable modesty, “because there’s a lot more people that have seen these videos who know me from these videos, than there are people have gone to the videos because my name was on them. I think I’ve benefitted from this more than they have. But it’s been good for all of us.”
Russian trombone virtuoso and singer (and honorary SAJB member) Anastasia Ivanova was thrilled to meet and play with Hamilton at the 2021 Jazzing, her second visit to Barcelona to play with the band.
She was thrilled — and perhaps a little star-struck — to meet, play with, and make a genuine impression on him, and they became fast friends during that week. He figures prominently in her video blog of the festival, chatting with her backstage as well as playing together for the audience.
As she said in her closing comments after Jazzing came to a close, “The festival is over, and I’m happy. I think I did a good job, I’m proud. I’m happy and I’m sad that I’m leaving tomorrow, but the thing that makes me happy is that Scott Hamilton came to me right after the concert, and looked into my eyes, and said, ‘Anastasia, you’re wonderful. Keep in touch, see you next year, or whenever.’ And also, he said I should continue the work I’m doing, and I will. Because when a legend tells you — so, you know, I must. I must continue.”
And she has indeed continued her devotion to jazz, while also becoming a musical celebrity in Russia.
SAJB saxophonist Koldo Munné, who has been with the band since he was seven, also feels honored by Hamilton’s participation on tunes that have been included in the Joan Chamorro presenta Koldo Munné album, released in 2023.
“Just the fact of being able to play at the Jamboree was amazing,” Koldo says, “because it’s the Jamboree — it’s important, and cool. And also playing with Scott was probably the best just cause he’s just — he sounds so amazing, that’s obvious, we all know that.”
As he describes the experience of playing side-by-side with the veteran, Koldo finds himself nearly at a loss for words. “The thing about playing with him is that — if he just sits there in his chair, it’s like — I usually play with my eyes closed, I don’t know why, and I’m just playing a solo or whatever, and I hear — he’s just, ‘oh, yeah, oh yeah!’, and it’s like, incredible, and gives you a lot of motivation.
“I had played with him before, but not as a soloist. I was always in the sax section, so he didn’t notice me a lot. But the first day he came to the Jazz House from the airport, and we had to start recording, I was just like, saying to myself, ‘You need to focus, you need to play with a good sound, you need to play good solos, ’cause it’s Scott Hamilton right next to you, so you have to make the best impression of yourself!’
“But then I was playing, and he said, ‘you have a great sound,’ and was very friendly, and so, in the end, that first day I was trying to push myself a little further to kind of impress him, but by the end of the day we became kind of friends, so it was like playing with a friend.”
“He’s played with incredible, legendary musicians, and after the first recording session, we were at the car with Joan and Elia, ’cause we were taking him to the hotel, and he was telling us stories the whole time, about the day he met this musician, or the day he met another musician, and he would tell all these jokes and funny stories, so I love him so much. He’s amazing.”
At the 2023 Jazzing, Elia sounded especially inspired during her much-anticipated set with Hamilton, taking songs like “My One and Only Love” to new heights, with the creativity and extraordinary virtuosity that has placed her among the greatest jazz violinists in the world.
“Playing with Scott Hamilton is a constant dream and inspiration for me,” she says. “It is a gift as a jazz musician to play with someone like him, and apart from being a great reference musically for me, he is a great person. We really enjoy the concerts together and I feel very lucky.”
Hamilton was busy onstage at Jazzing with other musicians as well, taking center stage for his own set, and in jam sessions with his fellow guest, Joel Frahm.
In August of ‘23, Joan Chamorro released Jazz House Sessions with Scott Hamilton, which includes a “tenor battle” with former SAJB saxophonists Joan Marti and Marcal Perramon, unreleased tracks from Elia Bastida Meets Scott Hamilton, Joan Chamorro presenta Alba Esteban, and Brazilian songs recorded with Alba Armengou and Vicente Lopez.
“In total,” Chamorro writes in the liner notes, “14 songs in which Scott shows why today he is still one of the great tenors of the world jazz scene.”
In August of 2024, Hamilton reunited again with Elia, Chamorro, Josep Traver on guitar, and Arnau Julia on drums— this time in Italy, at the Albenga Jazz Festival:
By Chamorro’s count, Hamilton has participated in 23 CDs with the Sant Andreu Jazz Band or related to the projects so far.
“Scott is a reference for us,” he says. “My students listen to his songs and transcribe his solos and memorize them. His lyricism, his timing, his ability to make wonderful music with few notes, his sound, make him a model to follow. My dream is to continue collaborating with him and one day be able to record in a quintet, with me playing the baritone sax and him on the tenor sax. Scott always encourages me to do it. It’s just a matter of finding the time.”
Perhaps the most fitting way to close here is with the words and photo by Traver, who has himself been an invaluable musician and teacher for the SAJB since its origins. He wrote of Hamilton in 2019:
“Today we played with Scott Hamilton. When he arrived at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Bern, he told us that he played there 30 years ago, and he remembered that when he arrived there was a bar where there was Art Blakey, with his thunderous voice, talking about something with his trio. Well, while Scott was on stage — playing with someone like him, who has been with Herb Ellis, Benny Goodman, Hank Jones and so on — I thought, this is a huge gift, and I couldn’t help but take a picture from my perspective.”
Until next time…
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“Joan Chamorro and the SAJB in 2024” | by Garry Berman | Medium
“Lola Peñaranda’s Sax Does the Talking” | by Garry Berman | April, 2024 | Medium
“Catching up with Anastasia Ivanova” |April, 2024 | Medium
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“Koldo Munné’s Musical Journey” | by Garry Berman | June, 2023 | Medium
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“The SAJB’s Koldo Munne Steps into the Jazz Spotlight” https://garryberman.medium.com/the-sajbs-koldo-munn%C3%A9-steps-into-the-jazz-spotlight-238b3231626f
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“Jan Domenech’s New Chapter as a Jazz Musician” https://garryberman.medium.com/jan-domenechs-new-chapter-as-a-jazz-musician-e1f0da8b19b9
“Joan Chamorro and the SAJB: Past, Present, and Future” https://medium.com/@garryberman/joan-chamorro-and-the-sajb-past-present-and-future-573eedcbff76
“Josep Traver: Guitarist of All Trades” https://garryberman.medium.com/josep-traver-guitarist-of-all-trades-608296f9d00a
“When American Jazz Pros Meet Spanish Jazz Kids” https://garryberman.medium.com/when-american-jazz-pros-meet-spanish-jazz-kids-25c7f5023571
“Claudia Rostey: The Life of an 18-year-old Bacelona Jazz Trombonist” https://garryberman.medium.com/claudia-rostey-the-life-of-an-18-year-old-barcelona-jazz-trombonist-d13b82c770a3
“The Magic of the Voice: The Singers of the Sant Andreu Jazz Band” https://garryberman.medium.com/the-magic-of-the-voice-the-singers-of-the-sant-andreu-jazz-band-208dfb629221
“Jobim is Alive and Well in Barcelona” https://garryberman.medium.com/jobim-is-alive-and-well-in-barcelona-d384b40d8c2e
“Did Someone Say Anastasia Ivanova?” https://garryberman.medium.com/did-someone-say-anastasia-ivanova-dd6f67277c64
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Until next time…
